psychoderelict and rael

[TAPEBOY@aol.com]

don't judge the whole psycho tour on the basis of the video.  the show for
the video (brooklyn) saw pete semi drunk and with a very rough voice from the
previous weeks of shows (and probably a new-found respect for roger's vocal
abilities).   i personally enjoy the video, but of the shows i saw it would
be just behind chicago as the worst of the tour.   you can learn a lot even
from the bad shows.   on the other hand, earlier that same week i had seen
two absolutely incredible shows in berkeley, that rate among the best pt
performances (with and without the who) that i have ever seen.   
     while the psychoderelict portion of the show was much better live than
on record, i still wish i could have heard these songs live without the
actors, who, i felt really got in the way of some great pt performances.   i
want that free ride to the house of life.   on disc, i almost never listen to
the actor version.  luckily i was able to get a advance copy of the disc
which included the music only version, so i always had that option.    pt on
the tour played some incredible guitar, for those out there who think his
'glory days' are behind him.   this was also true of his playing in '89.   as
much as he might not want (going into tours) to play in the classic PT style,
the reality is that, when he has an electric guitar in his hands, he just
seems to play that way naturally.
     rael (like so many other things...)was once part of a much larger plan,
that got pared down to what exists on 'sell out'.
there is a PT demo for a song called 'that motherland feeling' which is part
of the story as well.   the story (very briefly) involves the red chins (red
chinese) overflowing their borders and threatening surrounding areas.   due
to this threat, a well off deciple decides to sail to his homeland and
revisit the 'home of 'his' religion'.   he's not sure if he will stay or not,
so he tells his captain to return to rael on christmas day to see if he
wishes to return or not (depending on which flag the deciple is flying).
  the captain has other plans though......  i'm sure there's more to this
story, but we're not given much more to go on here.
     bette midler once played the acid queen in some kind of traveling
version of tommy in the early '70's.
     it is safe to assume that most who shows from at least '69
on were recorded on various formats.   the warehouse show from new orleans in
1971 isn't a pro-tape, but rather a regular
sound board tape.  the san francisco show on the other hand was a mult-track
pro recording, which brings up the tricky issue of the audible difference.
  to the average listener, a good sound board tape will sound like the equal
of a pro multi-track tape.   i believe the audio of the london coliseum show
from 1969 on the new video and on tkaa is from a soundboard source, whereas
leeds is a multi-track tape source.
i personally don't hear the big drop off in quality,  and what that means is
that available material is vastly expanded.....